Track records are important in fund management and Alan Miller’s is certainly one to make you stop and think.

He started one of Britain’s first hedge funds in 1997 and had a starring role at Gartmore, Jupiter and New Star. His flagship fund generated 17.5pc returns over nine years.

But his performance in marriage – or rather divorce – is perhaps even better known. During the acrimonious split from his second wife in 2002, the world learnt he had amassed a £30m fortune from New Star and also that he didn’t think his wife deserved much of it after just a few years of marriage.

Miller’s barrister famously argued it would have been cheaper for Miller to run his former wife over in his car than pay the £5m settlement he was ordered to.

Some thought it was brave of him to take the argument on his divorce all the way to the House of Lords (he lost). And now some might say he is being even braver still, setting up a new fund management group – with his new wife. And, furthermore, launching the business with a campaign against the industry’s high fees.

In a natty strapline across its literature, SCM Private (Spencer Churchill Miller – more on that later) boasts “security, high liquidity, low fees, respected fund managers… with trust, honesty and integrity at the heart of all we do”.

Sitting side by side in their Chelsea office, the founders are amused by any scepticism. “That comment [about running over his wife] was said by my barrister, not me,” Alan laughs. “He was trying to point out that you get less for losing limbs in an accident. I couldn’t help but agree with him. But it cost me a lot of money.”

The new business partnership takes a bit longer to explain. “People do find it odd,” admits Gina. “We actually sit opposite each other in an open-plan office, all day. It’s bizarre.”

“We did design it this way,” she adds later. “It’s more to do with Alan. Most men wouldn’t work with their wives. Alan is completely respectful of what I do. I run the business in sales and marketing; Alan runs the money. We’ve got very defined roles.”

Alan says: “We’re both trying to do the same thing. There are probably more issues in a fund management house where a manager is trying to do something sensible for the clients and the marketing department is trying to do the opposite.”

And that’s their beef: they believe Britain’s investment industry is failing clients. That is for two reasons – by having “huge conflicts of interest” between the investment and sales sides of the business and also by failing to be open with clients on fees and holdings

It hasn’t won them many friends in the industry. Some say it’s just a righteous marketing ploy, others that the pair are just plain wrong. The Investment Management Association (IMA) has been a notable critic. But a rival fund manager says: “The Millers have exaggerated some of the problems and also have blamed the fund firms rather than the distributors, but they definitely have a point.”

Alan argues that when most retail funds are sold, there’s little sign of the raft of fees. “It’s like buying a car: they are advertising the cost of the engine, not the price of the car,” he says. “With you, we don’t charge for the administration and we’re buying indexes [via exchange traded funds] so the cost of trading is much less.”

SCM clearly displays its charges – a management fee 0.75pc (plus VAT) of total invested, plus dealing and trading costs – which total around 1.45pc on both their equity funds. The track record is impressive: the long-term return fund has notched up 37pc returns since its inception in June 2009 while the absolute return portfolio has hit 29.8pc. The base is relatively low – assets under management are “looking at end of year £100m” – but it’s growing.

Gina says their position is misunderstood: “The campaign is about choice; it’s not about low fees. We have never said that transparency is about low fees. We’ve said that people have the right to know what something costs before you buy it. It is the only industry you can’t find it out.”

The pair have also designed specialist software so clients can check their positions every evening at home.

Alan says: “We’re not the cheapest, we’re not the most expensive, we may suit some, not others. But how can the investor or consumer compare when they don’t have a clue how much, first, it’s costing and, second, where the money is invested?” Right. So after a career that spans several decades in the industry, why has it taken so long to start this crusade?

“When you’re working in a fund, you’re concentrating on your objective, which is managing that piece of money,” says Alan. “When we took a step back, you suddenly see all these practices in the City… you see the things that go on and you see the things that you want that aren’t possible.”

For Alan and Gina, the epiphany occurred when they tried to liquidate their assets during the nadir of the financial crisis in 2008. The couple had been together several years and were enjoying a “retirement” travelling around the world with their two small children.

Gina explains: “We had put our money with the trusted names in the wealth industry. We had a call in September and were told armageddon is going to happen. So we came back to the UK and put our house in order. We found [some investments] were illiquid when we thought we were liquid; we couldn’t get out of some products when we thought we could. We suddenly thought if we had been mis-sold with our knowledge level, what about everyone else?”

The pair decided to start a “very different” fund management group. Or at least she did.

They both admit, Alan had no burning desire to start again; Gina on the other hand is more “driven”. “He was quite happy, I’m afraid I was bored,” says Gina. “We have very different personalities,” she adds.

“Alan has always worked for an organisation, it’s very difficult being almost controlled in a corporate environment. Whereas I’ve always been an entrepreneur and my eagerness has been to start a new business and push the boundaries. It’s quite different. Most entrepreneurs can’t sit still for more than a couple of months.”

“Couple of minutes,” says Alan, dryly, but otherwise doesn’t complain about this rather pedestrian description of his existence before her.

Instead he agrees his years as a hedge fund manager – spent largely with John Duffield, the maverick financier and founder of both Jupiter and New Star – were tiring and stressful, as well as lucrative.

Meanwhile, Gina was forging a career in events and marketing.

She worked for the car giant BMW and “launched their fleet in the UK”, but still “needed a challenge” so she shifted to financial services and marketed Legal & General and Scottish Widows.

In 2002 she was asked to help launch New Star, where she met Alan.

By 2005 they had quit work to be together, have children and go travelling. They had reached Panama by the time they decided to return to the UK in 2008.

They started the business with Alexander Spencer Churchill, a young aristocratic property agent.

The pair are cagey about Spencer Churchill’s involvement – probably because he left after six months – but originally they clearly hoped to use both his name and contact book to attract wealthy clients.

Alan says: “Property works because it’s untransparent; you get to see a building before it comes on the market and you try and buy at the wrong price. So it was chalk and cheese with what we were trying to do.”

Under the SCM business model, clients have their own accounts – minimum direct investment £250,000 – at Pershing Bank, a branch of Bank of New York Mellon.

His preference is to invest in Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) because of their broad exposure to different indices as well as their low costs. He brushes away criticism of ETFs which have been sometimes been labelled as dangerous because they don’t own physical assets.

“There’s been so much nonsense, scaremongering about ETFs,” he says, much of which can be put down to the “dinosaur fund management industry trying its best to defend itself against the new world”.

“[ETFs] offer investors much less cost, much less diversification and much better performance so they’re deeply unpopular as a result,” he argues.

It’s fighting talk. Now they’ve just got to convince the dinosaurs they’re right.